Park Highlights

Haleakala

National Park

Hawaii

Haleakala National Park, Hawaii

Haleakala Crater is now a cool, cone-studded reminder of a once-active volcano. Streaks of red, yellow, gray, and black trace the courses of recent and ancient lava, ash, and cinder flows. The volcanic rocks slowly break down as natural forces reduce them to minute particles which are swept away by wind, heavy rain, and intermittent streams.

A fiery birth beneath the sea
Modern geology indicates that the Hawaiian Islands are situated near the middle of the Pacific Plate, one of a dozen thin, rigid structures covering our planet like the cracked shell of an egg. Though adjoining each other, these plates are in constant slow motion, the Pacific Plate moving northwestward several centimeters per year. Scattered around the world are many weak areas in the earth's crust where magma slowly wells upward to the surface as a "plume". Here volcanoes and volcanic islands, such as Maui, are born.

This constant northwestward movement of the Pacific Plate over a local volcanic "hot spot", or plume, has produced a series of islands one after another in assembly line fashion. The result is a chain of volcanic islands stretching from the island of Hawaii along a southeast/northwest line for 4,050 kilometers (2,500 miles) toward Japan.

Mountains Above the Sea
Maui, one of the younger islands in this chain, began as two separate volcanoes on the ocean floor; time and again, eon after eon, they erupted and thin new sheets of lava spread upon the old, building and building until the volcano heads emerged from the sea. Lava, wind-blown ash, and alluvium eventually joined the two by an isthmus or valley, forming Maui, "The Valley Isle". Finally, Haleakala, the larger eastern volcano, reached its greatest height, 3,600 meters (12,000 feet) above the ocean - some 9,100 meters (30,000 feet) from its base on the ocean floor.

Waters Upon the Mountain
For a time, volcanic activity ceased, and erosion dominated. The great mountain was high enough to trap the moisture-laden northeast tradewinds. Rain fell and streams began to cut channels down its slopes. Two such streams eroding their way headward created large amphitheater-like depressions near the summit.

Ultimately these two valleys met, creating a long erosional "crater". At the same time a series of ice age submergences and emergences of the shoreline occurred; the final submergence formed the four islands of Lanai, Molokai, Kahoolawe, and Maui.

Lava Down the Valleys
When volcanic activity resumed near the summit, lava poured down the stream valleys, nearly filling them. More recently, cinders, ash, volcanic bombs, and spatter were blown from the numerous young vents in the "crater" forming multi-colored symmetrical cones as high as 180 meters (600 feet).

Thus this water-carved basin became partially filled with lava and cinder cones, and it came to resemble a true volcanic crater.

Stillness Within the Volcano
Several hundred years have passed since the last volcanic activity occurred within the crater. This stillness in Maui is attributed by modern geology to the constant northwestward movement of the pacific Plate. As the oldest islands on the northwest end of the chain have moved farther away from the plume - the source of new lava -they have ceased to grow; the ravages of wind and rain and time have thus been able to reduce them to sandbars and atolls.

Maui has shifted a few kilometers from the plume's influence, and Haleakala, too, is destined to become extinct. Though dormant now, about 1790, which is quite recent in geologic time, two minor flows at lower elevations along the southwest rift zone of Haleakala reached the sea and altered the southwest coastline of Maui. Today, earthquake records indicate the internal adjustments are still taking place in the earth's crust, but at present, no volcanic activity of any form is visible in the crater nor at any other place on the island of Maui. Perhaps Haleakala could erupt again; we just don't know.

Though Maui is no longer growing, the youngest island in the chain, Hawaii, is enlarging. And as plate drift continues, it is even probable that in the distant future, a new volcanic island will appear to the southeast of Hawaii, the Big Island.

The spectacular geology in our national parks provides the answers to many
questions about the Earth. The answers can be appreciated through plate tectonics,
an exciting way to understand the ongoing natural processes that sculpt our
landscape. Parks and Plates is a visual and scientific voyage of discovery!

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